The Hollow Core of Allegiance

There are moments when the mask slips.

Not in speeches or slogans, but in the reflex — the instant reaction before talking points are assembled. Those moments tell you what people actually believe.

One of those moments arrived after the shooting involving ICE and activist Alex Pretti. The facts were disputed almost immediately. Narratives hardened. Sides formed fast. But beneath the noise, something more revealing surfaced.

Principles, it turns out, are easy to praise in theory. Much harder to honor when they protect the wrong person.

A principle only matters when it applies universally. Otherwise, it’s just a preference dressed up as virtue.

And what followed exposed how thin that dressing has become.

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For decades, American conservatism has wrapped itself in the language of rights. The First Amendment. The Second. Individual liberty as something sacred, not granted by the state, not contingent on ideology.

That language sounded firm. Absolute.

Until it wasn’t.

When it emerged that Pretti — a left-wing protester — was legally armed, many of the loudest defenders of gun rights went quiet. Others flipped entirely. Lawful concealed carry was suddenly suspicious. Carrying extra ammunition became a signal of intent rather than prudence.

 

 

The standard never changed. The person did.

And that’s the tell.

A right that only applies to allies is not a right at all. It’s a tribal privilege. The same commentators who spent years warning against using isolated incidents to justify erosion of gun rights were suddenly comfortable doing exactly that — as long as the target was politically inconvenient.

This wasn’t a misstep. It was a revelation.

The old language of liberty remained, but the core was gone.

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The fracture runs deeper — and darker — within modern Christianity.

Here, the contradiction isn’t subtle. It’s glaring.

The teachings are plain. Love your enemies. Blessed are the peacemakers. Put down the sword.

Yet large segments of the Christian right now cheer for mass death abroad while proclaiming themselves defenders of life at home. Civilian casualties are rationalized. Starvation becomes strategy. Bombed hospitals become footnotes.

The victims’ identities determine the moral weight.

That isn’t theology. It’s alignment.

When faith becomes fused to geopolitics, Christ recedes into the background. His words remain quoted, but selectively. Carefully trimmed. Safely defanged.

What’s left is nationalism with a cross pinned to it — a belief system that borrows religious language while rejecting its demands.

The uncomfortable truth is this: consistency requires sacrifice. And sacrifice is exactly what tribal religion refuses to make.

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Moral certainty was once the right’s great weapon.

Family values. Sanctity of life. Character matters.

Until power entered the equation.

Then those values became flexible. Excusable. Redefinable.

The same voices that once thundered against personal immorality now wave it through if the outcomes feel strategically useful. The shift is so complete it barely draws comment anymore.

This is moral relativism in its purest form — not the kind openly embraced, but the kind denied while practiced daily.

Strangely, it mirrors what the right claims to despise most. On both ends of the spectrum, children become negotiable. Bodies become battlegrounds. Harm is excused when wrapped in the right rhetoric.

Different slogans. Same vacancy.

No universal line is held.

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Perhaps the most dangerous collapse, though, is procedural.

We are now told that emergencies justify shortcuts. That due process is optional. That expanding state power is acceptable if it targets the right group.

This argument has a long history. It never ends well.

Rights were not designed for moments of convenience. They exist precisely to restrain authority when fear is high and tempers are hot. Trading thems them away for speed or vengeance does not defeat tyranny — it installs it.

Every surveillance system built for today’s enemy becomes tomorrow’s leash.

Every exception becomes precedent.

And history has been unambiguous about how that story ends.

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So why cling to principles when they cost you allies?

Because without them, nothing restrains power but sentiment. And sentiment shifts fast.

On a civic level, shared principles are the only thing that allow strangers with opposing views to coexist without coercion. They are the floor beneath disagreement.

On a deeper level, they are a test of integrity. A refusal to let fear decide who deserves dignity.

The principled person will not fit comfortably anywhere now. They will anger the right by opposing its wars and the left by rejecting its ideologies. They will be told they are naïve. Or dangerous. Or disloyal.

That isolation is not accidental. It is the price of consistency.

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A true principle does not bend for allies or harden against enemies. It does not ask who benefits. It asks what is right — and answers the same way every time.

In an era addicted to outrage and allegiance, that stance looks almost subversive.

But it is the only ground that holds.

The hollow core we’re witnessing is not inevitable. It is chosen. And it can be refused.

The rare path now is not victory, or relevance, or applause. It is integrity — quiet, stubborn, and deeply unfashionable.

And in a world of hollow loyalties, that may be the last thing with any real weight left.